Thirty-four years have passed since Germany hosted the Chess Olympiad (Siegen 1970). Now they plan to become the first nation in the history to have held six Olympic events. The bid for year 2008 is Dresden. So far they have no opposition and the deadline for 2008 applications is April 15th, 2004. Below you will find their homepage, the only problem is that they did not translate it from German to English.

http://www.schachbund.de/chess_oly/

OlimpBase has been designed to bring complete data for all the Chess Olympiads played in the history. As you must have noticed so far only 1927-1974 period has been done. The rest is missing. We want to be ready for October 14th, the Calvia take off. We are growing dynamically, but we are still missing some data. We are working on Haifa 1976 and Malta 1980 now. Please contact us in case you could help with other Olympiads:

- For 1976-1994 period - player's titles (GM, IM, FM) and ELOs,
- Haifa 1976 - title corrections,
- Buenos Aires 1978 - team rosters, round-by-round team pairings,
- Lucern 1982, Thessaloniki 1984, Dubai 1986, Thessaloniki 1988, Novi Sad 1990, Manila 1992, Moscow 1994 - team rosters, round-by-round pairings, board-by-board pairings, complete game files.
- ... and miscellanea - articles, photos, reports, extra statistics, trivia and whatever you think maybe of value for thousands of our readers.

Please click the mail icon lying at the menu on the left in order to email us.
 

This is our new series devoted to those, who did not earn worldwide credit adequate to their chess skills and Olympic achievements. One of them is certainly Isaac Kashdan (born 1905), relatively unknown US player. In fact he was one of strongest players of the world in early 30's. Even Alekhine mentioned one day that Kashdan might be next World Champion. He earned well-deserved nickname of "the little Capablanca" because of his unique ability to extract victories from seemingly even positions. Unfortunately Kashdan could not engage seriously into chess career. He turned to earn a living as an insurance agent and administrator in order to support his family.

His Olympic record is ultimate and unique. He participated in 1928, 1930, 1931, 1933 and 1937. He won three gold and one silver medal with US team. He won as much as 52 games overall and lost only 5, one at each Olympiad, two of them in the last round (vs Rubinstein in 1931 and vs Flohr in 1933). He never scored worse than 70% winning two gold individual medals, one silver, one bronze, and one fourth place overall. In Stockholm, 1937 he scored 14/16, the best individual record of all the players. His all-time Olympic record of 79.7% is unique achievement superior to vast majority of chess giants.

He had many serious achievements in non-Olympic tournaments as well. In 1930 he won 1st prizes in Berlin, Stockholm and Gyor. He was 2nd, right behind Capablanca in New York, 1931 and tied for 4th in Bled on the same year. In 1932 he tied 2nd behind Alekhine in Pasadena, tied 1st prize with Alekhine at Mexico City and tied 2nd to Flohr at Hastings. He tied for 1st place in US Championship in 1942 but lost play-off vs Reshevsky.

After the War Kashdan maintained his ties to chess by organizing and directing tournaments, and editing the chess column for the prestigious Los Angeles Times from 1955 until 1982. He was also the co-founder of Chess Review. In 1950 he was awarded the IM title, in 1954 he got the GM title and the IA title in 1960. He passed away at the age of 79 in 1985.

Few have contributed more to the development of the chess life in USA than GM Isaac Kashdan.

This is one of his best and most famous games being a vivid proof for his profound knowledge of the endings. For the above, he was given a special prize for the best ending:

Kashdan - Flohr, Hamburg 1930

Now it is time for some relax. Check your chess skills and Olympic history knowledge. Perhaps in the future we shall develop our quiz section with more sophisticated tests but today we start with very simple question. The picture on the left illustrates one of most famous, classical Olympic games. Here is full game notation.

Your task is to tell us who commanded White pieces and who played with Black. After no less than 24 hours the correct answer shall be given here. The first person to send correct answer to us (please use the menu bar icon for e-mail) shall be proclaimed The Winner. Sorry, no money, just pride!

The answer is of course Tal-Hecht, Varna 1962. Tal did not move his Queen back and went on for a dazzling win after couple of moves. Our today's winner is Pierre Bourget, a well-know Canadian Olympic expert.

We are pleased to inform the readers, that thanks to Mr. Geoffrey Borg, the President of the Maltese Chess Federation we have expanded Folkestone 1933 Olympiad database by almost 30 games, mainly played by Scottish players. The server has already been updated. Our thanks goes to Malta, and we are looking for more. We are missing yet as much as 4,644 games overall!

We are proud to announce that OlimpBase has become a source of information on the Chess Olympiads' history at 36th Chess Olympiad's Official WWW Site.

http://www.36chessolympiad.com

This is tremendous incentive for us to be ready with all the 35 Olympiads until 14th October. Judging by your broad response to our queries it should be no problem. Thanks all!

The Spring has come and so did OlimpBase. After many months of hard and arduous work we are proud to present you the complete database of the Chess Olympiads. So far we are missing 1976-2002 period but it is only up to you how quickly will we fill up the blanks.

OlimpBase's rapid growth was contributed by many volunteers from all over the world who provide us with priceless help. We are hoping for more.

With OlimpBase you may do at least the following:

- See past Olympiad Results.
- Read Olympic-related articles.
- Watch all-time statistics.
- Support us (strongly recommended!).
- Join our newsletter, sign the guestbook or discuss at our forum .
- and more.

Enjoy!